


Salt Water and Green Sky

by violet_strange



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Consentacles, First Time, Fluff, M/M, Sherstrade, Tentacles, consensual tentacle sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-03 08:17:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1068169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violet_strange/pseuds/violet_strange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lestrade discovers that Sherlock is not the man he seems to be and may not be human at all.</p><p>Tentacle AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salt Water and Green Sky

"Why did it take you so long to come up? That was enough time to listen to Pierre Boulez's 'Dérive 1' or 'Be My Baby' twice. Why were you hesitating?" Sherlock asked. Lestrade had stayed on the stairs a ridiculously long time.

"I need a second pair of eyes and I'm not in the mood to have you throw this in my face because it's a three on your scale of criminal importance," Lestrade replied.

"It's important to you?" Sherlock turned to face Lestrade. Sherlock looked terrible, pale and worried in way that Lestrade had never seen.

"Are you all right?"

Sherlock didn't answer.

"Look, if you're ill--"

"I'm fine, Lestrade. Tell me about your case."

"Remember the missing grocer from Surbiton--" Before Lestrade could bring back memories of a dull case Sherlock claimed to have deleted, John entered the sitting room. He looked just as ill as Sherlock did.

"I'm back," John said. He looked at Lestrade. "Does he--"

"No," Sherlock said firmly. "He's here to tell me about a case."

"I see. I'll be upstairs."

"You're not leaving?" Sherlock asked.

Until that moment, Lestrade had never understood why people mistook Sherlock and John for a couple. For the first time he felt as if there were layers to their communication that he could not comprehend, he was scrambling about on sun-bleached limestone, while they were embedded in granite.

"I'm not leaving," John said.

Sherlock's entire body relaxed at John's words, and it may have been a trick of the light, but Lestrade could have sworn his eyes became a deeper blue. John knew his secret and accepted it.

Sometimes Lestrade found himself staring at Sherlock and wondering what the secret was. It couldn't be something from his past because Lestrade knew Sherlock's past; they'd first met when Sherlock was twelve and living in London with his mother and attending a fancy school with tuition higher than his Detective Constable pay. Sherlock, a genius even then, had marched into the Kensington police station and demanded to give evidence about an incident he had seen in the newspaper. Lestrade, as the newest DC, had been told to walk the aspiring detective back to his Holland Park flat with its view of flowering cherry trees in the park before anyone could complain. As they walked, Lestrade had listened to Sherlock and remembered everything he said.

Five years later, Lestrade let Sherlock off with a warning instead of intent to distribute. It was a way of saying thank you for the spring afternoon which had given such a boost to his career. Lestrade knew more about Sherlock's past than John ever could. If the situation was reversed, Sherlock would study him, leaf through the books carelessly left open.

"You've been staring at me," Sherlock said. The case was closed. Sherlock had managed to dismantle the music teacher's alibi despite CCTV and timetables that originally had backed his story.

"Just like seeing your handsome face," Lestrade said.

"Sarcasm. In this case, sarcasm that hides the truth. I'm flattered, but you know I'm not interested in romance."

"I know, I've never see you with anyone, but that doesn't mean... remember that day when I came to you with the Milburn case."

Sherlock went still.

"John accepts your secret, so why don't you trust me?"

"It's different with John."

"Why? I've known you longer than he has."

"With John, I don't... with you... John accepts that I'm not fully human."

"Don't say that about yourself. You might be a high-functioning whatever, but you are a human like the rest of us."

"I'm not." Something inside Sherlock broke at the stubborn look on Lestrade's face. Lestrade was so determined to believe.

"I'm not fully human," he said. "Let me show you."

Sherlock was coming apart, there was no other way of describing it. His body remained roughly the same shape, but where a solid, human figure had been, individual stands were moving. Lestrade remembered a childhood trip to an aquarium where he’d been fascinated by the way the translucent creatures moved through the darkness, jeweled clusters gliding through the water, strands catching the light and glowing with unearthly beauty. The shape of the creature in front of him was roughly human, he could see where Sherlock’s head and arms and legs had been, but there was nothing human about him.

Sherlock _wasn’t_ human. The world was a very different place from what he had always known. The creature that had been Sherlock undulated in the dim light from the street.

“I told you, Lestrade.”

The voice was Sherlock’s. It was the same tone he’d used the afternoon Lestrade had found him outside a pub in North Peckham. Trying to make his way in the world after dropping out of university, he had ignored Lestrade’s advice to get a job with a real detective agency and leave the serious crime fighting to the professionals. Sherlock had been lucky to get away with only one eye blackened; the police had made the arrests, and Sherlock had turned to Lestrade with a defiant “I told you.”

Lestrade had heard the vulnerability Sherlock could never express in words; he’d heard it then and he heard it in the creature that stood before him.

Lestrade took a deep breath and stepped towards the creature. He reached out and tentatively patted the area that might have been Sherlock’s shoulder. “I’ve certainly seen you looking more together. Is that how you get people to confess to you? Show them this and wiggle at them a bit?”

“I’ve never shown anyone outside my family, except John, and now you.” If Lestrade closed his eyes he could imagine the voice came from the Sherlock he knew. He forced himself to keep them open.

“John ran away when I showed him.”

“He came back.”

“He’s my friend.”

“You can have more than one friend, Sherlock.” Lestrade patted Sherlock’s shoulder again. The skin, or whatever covered the writhing strands, felt oddly pleasant to his touch. Cool and dry, but there was something moving through them, almost as if he could feel Sherlock’s heart beat. Impulsively, he ran his fingers through the strands, his hand moved through them like water and Sherlock whimpered. Lestrade stopped, worried he had hurt Sherlock in some way.

Sherlock was startled by the delicate sparks of joy that coursed through him at Lestrade’s touch. He’d never been touched while he was in this form, not by his mother, who claimed she could see his true father in him, not by his half-brother Mycroft, and not by John. There was more, something he would never be able to tell Lestrade.

That spring afternoon so long ago, he’d been a child, but he had known he would never find a girl as beautiful as the young detective who walked with him, listening attentively to his every word. “You’ll understand when you’re older,” they had told him. He hadn’t understood everything, but that night, he had imagined the detective’s smiling face and broad shoulders and touched himself. Instead of the feelings he’d expected from the clinical books on adolescent development that had been his only source of information, he had come apart. His body, which had always felt solid and real, separated into thousands of individual, living nerves. He had screamed and his mother came running. She had apologised and confirmed what Sherlock had always known: he wasn’t like other people.

Now Lestrade was in front of him, touching him, smiling at him. He wanted more. He wanted to possess Lestrade, to claim every inch of him and make him cry out in pleasure. “Don’t stop,” he murmured.

Lestrade turned red. “Is it…I didn’t realise”

Sherlock extended his tentacles and drew Lestrade closer. They had minds of their own, caressing Lestrade in ways he never would have dared, sliding under his clothing, brushing against his skin.

“Keep talking, Sherlock.” Lestrade looked a little frightened, but he reciprocated Sherlock’s movements, running his hands along his singing nerves. “Please keep talking so I know it’s you. It is you, isn’t it?”

“Yes, my love.” Every cell in his body exhaled his name. Endearments he never would have dreamed of uttering filled the air as he freed Lestrade from his clothing and wrapped himself around his eager body.

Lestrade didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know if he should suggest moving to the sofa or the bed, or if it was easier for Sherlock if they stayed standing. This question was answered when a thicker tentacle, the size of a small tree branch, slid around his waist and lifted him off the ground. He fell forward a little, but another heavy tentacle reached around his chest and steadied him, while the finer ones danced along beside it, spiraling against him and teasing his nipples.

He started to laugh, and another thick tentacle pushed itself against his mouth. He gently kissed its rounded tip. It started to release a thick, clear liquid, a few drops fizzed on Lestrade’s tongue. It reminded him of visiting the sea on a windy day, salt in his hair and eyes, salt in the frozen fruit he’d bought to ease his thirst. He opened his mouth and pushed against it with his tongue, then brushed it lightly with his teeth. Sherlock seemed to like that, the reassuring litany stuttered a little as the tentacle quivered. He wanted to stroke the tentacles he could reach, allowing the smaller ones to flow through his fingers like water, squeezing the thicker ones until Sherlock moaned.

Tentacles swarmed over his legs, spreading him and holding him so he couldn’t move. One of the thicker tentacles circled his cock slowly, covering it in the clear liquid, massaging it until Lestrade was harder than he had ever been, while the smaller ones eagerly crawled over the rest of him, vibrating with delight as they covered him. They drifted through his legs and teased at his opening, spreading their liquid and trying to slip inside. “If you keep doing that… I’m going to come,” Lestrade warned.

“Not yet,” Sherlock said.

A new tentacle emerged from the centre of the writhing mass. It wasn’t as thick as the ones that were supporting his body, it was almost translucent, light pulsing inside as it moved. Lestrade tried to relax. He’d never been penetrated before, and he never would have imagined it would happen like this, a creature with Sherlock’s voice and Sherlock’s presence caressing him and taking him apart until he dissolved in lust. Lestrade shuddered a little at the pain; the tentacle pulled back, allowing the smaller ones to soothingly rub more of the liquid over him, massaging him until it could slide inside. It started to move, growing larger, stretching him. Lestrade moved his hips, it followed his lead, pulling out and thrusting in response to his movements. Together, they formed the heart of a blissful vortex. Lestrade cried out as the tentacle moved against something deep inside and his body was flooded with pure electricity. He let the electric waves carry him into a peaceful darkness.

Sherlock’s room, Sherlock’s bed, and Sherlock, human now, sleeping beside him. His memories were fragmented, they'd been together, the ocean roaring above their heads and through their souls. He'd been _known_ in a way that was frightening and he had just begun to know all of Sherlock.

Sherlock opened his eyes, slightly confused, he sat up and looked down at Lestrade.

“You’re still here.”

“Did you think you were going to toss me out without breakfast?” Lestrade smiled at Sherlock’s bewildered expression.

“You’re still here,” Sherlock repeated. He hesitantly curled himself into Lestrade, resting his head on Lestrade’s chest.

“I’m not going anywhere, unless you want me to.” Lestrade wrapped his arms around Sherlock. The other Sherlock had felt so different, even though his essence remained the same.

“I don’t want anything to change,” Sherlock mumbled into Lestrade’s arms. “Just because we’re together, don’t think I’m going to start solving your _boring_ cases.”

“Not even if I ask nicely?”

Sherlock sat up again and glared at Lestrade. “No dealers shooting each other over fifty euros. No jealous spouses.”

Lestrade stroked his arm. Sherlock was so warm and human.

“And you can’t touch me when we’re in public. Ever. I don’t know that I can always control myself when it comes to you.” Lestrade looked a little too pleased at his words. “I didn’t mean…”

Lestrade pulled him in for a kiss, keeping him from other, more embarrassing confessions.

 


End file.
